S01.E02: The Assassination Of Abraham Lincoln

[MissLucas]

I enjoyed this less than the pilot. Maybe I'm one of the geeks mentioned in the article who are too obsessed with time travel but I seriously doubt how they want to keep track of all the micro- (and macro) changes every episode. 12 Monkeys managed to pull it off but they had not altering timelines for every single episode to deal with.

Also - what's up with all the hot widowers suddenly popping up everywhere. We got two here, one in Legends of Tomorrow, one in Hooten and the Lady and obviously one in Lethal Weapon. Is a deceased wife (dead child optional) the new daddy issues?

[txhorns79]

Quote

Most scifi shows and movies want to avoid the future though because they don't want the expense in money and thought to create a plausible future. 

I don't know if I agree with that.  I think what people think the future will be like is a topic that has been constantly revisited in scifi movies and television. 

I still enjoy the show.  I feel like the show is somewhat inconsistent in how our time travelers are about altering the past.  Sometimes they seem very vigilant not to interfere, and other times they seem rather careless.  I mean, Rufus randomly advising the soldier to move north instead of returning south is extremely careless. 

[shapeshifter]

5 hours ago, MissLucas said:

...Also - what's up with all the hot widowers suddenly popping up everywhere. We got two here, one in Legends of Tomorrow, one in Hooten and the Lady and obviously one in Lethal Weapon. Is a deceased wife (dead child optional) the new daddy issues?

It's similar to young people on TV being orphaned. The writers don't have to write dialogue for those relationships (unless maybe a few flash backs), and it keeps the cast to an economical size.  

Edited October 18, 2016 by shapeshifter
preposition and homonym

[jaigurudeva]

Calling it: Flynn is Lucy's dad, after her mom had a fling with a "mysterious tall man" who happened to show up out of the blue in the 80's.

[RemoteControlFreak]

On 10/11/2016 at 1:23 AM, CeeBeeGee said:

Anyway, still loved it. But where did Lucy get that second dress? Surely she didn't plan for a social appointment when back at HQ--so where did she get the money?

I think she went to a store and bought the dress.  But, yeah, where are they getting money that they're using in various years to which they are traveling?

14 hours ago, jaigurudeva said:

Calling it: Flynn is Lucy's dad, after her mom had a fling with a "mysterious tall man" who happened to show up out of the blue in the 80's.

Agree.

[RemoteControlFreak]

On 10/14/2016 at 0:42 PM, dubbel zout said:

Because Rufus is awesome. He's the best part of the show, IMO, and Malcolm Barrett is being criminally underused.

Yes. Lucy's supposed to be the history expert and she pretty much does that.  Wyatt's competent as the military muscle.  Rufus is supposed to be the technical expert. Beyond flying the time machine, we don't see him using those skills much.  Obviously, 2016 technology does not exist in 1937, 1962, 1865, etc. but the writers should show him at least with some kind of geeky curiosity about how the world works at various times in history. Instead, we get him as kind of an unwilling time traveler whose main role is to show the treatment of black Americans in the past. This certainly has value, but his professional expertise also needs to be incorporated.

[dubbel zout]

Hopefully he'll need to hotwire a radio soon.

[legaleagle53]

33 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

Hopefully he'll need to hotwire a radio soon.

And of course, he'll complain that he's being forced to work with "stone knives and bearskins" (City on the Edge of Forever reference).

[catray]

I'm well behind but I really enjoyed this episode; moreso than the pilot. I enjoy the three leads-- the only one I'm familiar with is Matt Lantner from his voicework on The Clone Wars, but I like all of them. One thing I am annoyed with, highlighted in this episode by Rufus bumbling his cover with the black Union soldiers, is why the heck don't they give the team some sort of brief dossier on the period and some kind of cover story?! Maybe this will be remedied in future episodes, but it seems like a sensible idea. 

I'm definitely on the "Flynn is Lucy's father" train as well as the "Wyatt's dead wife will reappear at some point" train because it just seems like the obvious place to go. We'll see what direction they decide to take. 

[legaleagle53]

52 minutes ago, catray said:

I'm well behind but I really enjoyed this episode; moreso than the pilot. I enjoy the three leads-- the only one I'm familiar with is Matt Lantner from his voicework on The Clone Wars, but I like all of them. One thing I am annoyed with, highlighted in this episode by Rufus bumbling his cover with the black Union soldiers, is why the heck don't they give the team some sort of brief dossier on the period and some kind of cover story?! Maybe this will be remedied in future episodes, but it seems like a sensible idea. 

Lucy IS the "brief dossier" on the time period.  What I wonder is how they're going to handle the language barrier when they start going to times and places where 21st-Century English is not necessarily an option.

Edited October 19, 2016 by legaleagle53

[Haleth]

On 10/17/2016 at 4:41 PM, Lugal said:

The explanation was he never was her father, which is why she still exists at all.  It seems to be a painful fact for her mother since she did not want to talk about it.  Lucy would never known if it weren't for the fact that she continues to exist in the new timeline.

Yeah, mom's discomfort/anger at the question suggests that dad did something painful... like maybe disappear without a trace one day.  Wanna bet mom destroyed all pics of him?  We can't have Lucy find out so easily that her bio dad was Garcia Flynn (which is obviously a made up name).

So does Lucy have a different last name now?

On 10/17/2016 at 11:34 PM, jaigurudeva said:

Calling it: Flynn is Lucy's dad, after her mom had a fling with a "mysterious tall man" who happened to show up out of the blue in the 80's.

I bet they were colleagues and he's a historian too.  And he's righting the wrongs created by Rittenhouse.  So predictable.  

[niklj]

I thought that Lucy and Robert Todd Lincoln had a lot of chemistry haha. I would've preferred watching her changing the course of history with him instead of Wyatt, who I recognized from his start on the male model reality show Manhunt (don't judge me!)

Edited October 24, 2016 by niklj
Typo

[Mojeaux]

On 10/11/2016 at 5:10 PM, Chaos Theory said:

I actually kind of like the debate about the wife vs the sister.  Its an interesting one time travel wise.  What makes the sister worth saving and not the wife?  How can they be sure that the sister's timeline is the correct one? 

I think the concept is the sister's more important because their actions directly caused her to vanish, while the wife died in their original timeline. If they fixed the sister problem, they fix their own mistake.

[benteen]

I'm catching up on this series.  I saw this episode and really enjoyed it although these three people should NOT be allowed to travel back in time.  It's an unbelievable, brand new experience for everyone I understand but the fact that they are so hell bent on trying to alter everything the second they go back in time should get them disqualified from ever being sent back in time again.  Seriously, haven't the guys (I'm blaming them and Lucy) seen a time travel movie?  They are a walking disaster.

I do appreciate some of the details.  The story about Edwin Booth saving Robert Todd Lincoln's life in a true one although Edwin didn't realize this until sometime after the assassination.  A detail the show missed...Secretary of State Seward was in a neck brace (actually a splint to repair his jaw) and had several broken bones after a carriage accident when the assassin Lewis Powell tried to kill him.  He was pretty much bedridden.  Sewell's wife died weeks later, never getting over the shock of what happened.  Seward's son was stabbed but recovered (as well as three others I believe).  I imagine these were the changes the team caused by getting to Powell before he got into Seward's room.

Edited October 30, 2016 by benteen

[officetemp]

I'm wondering what happened to John Wilkes Booth, since Flynn knocked him down in the street before going to kill Lincoln himself.  In the original time line, Booth died 12 days after the assassination at the end of the manhunt for him--after he was shot and paralyzed.  I don't think Flynn caused any injury when he knocked Booth down.  Did his co-conspirators implicate him in the assassination plot, was he arrested and did he stand trial?  If he was convicted, was he executed?  Or did he manage to elude capture and flee out west someplace and live out his life in obscurity under an assumed name?  Did he have any descendants?

[legaleagle53]

2 hours ago, officetemp said:

I'm wondering what happened to John Wilkes Booth, since Flynn knocked him down in the street before going to kill Lincoln himself.  In the original time line, Booth died 12 days after the assassination at the end of the manhunt for him--after he was shot and paralyzed.  I don't think Flynn caused any injury when he knocked Booth down.  Did his co-conspirators implicate him in the assassination plot, was he arrested and did he stand trial?  If he was convicted, was he executed?  Or did he manage to elude capture and flee out west someplace and live out his life in obscurity under an assumed name?  Did he have any descendants?

As I recall, one of the crew said that although he didn't personally kill Lincoln, he was blamed for his part in the greater conspiracy and was eventually captured and executed.

[officetemp]

21 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

As I recall, one of the crew said that although he didn't personally kill Lincoln, he was blamed for his part in the greater conspiracy and was eventually captured and executed.

Thank you!

[Occasional Hope]

I had a horrible icky thought that Lucy's fiance was going to turn out to be her [step/foster/whatever]father from the previous timeline.  So glad they didn't go there.